


Kind Eyes

by PrincessBethoc



Category: Holby City
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-08-22
Updated: 2019-08-22
Packaged: 2020-09-24 08:46:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,969
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20355679
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PrincessBethoc/pseuds/PrincessBethoc
Summary: An old face returns without warning to Henrik Hanssen's life. It just so happens that she's brought trouble along with her...or maybe it was trouble that brought her.





	Kind Eyes

**Author's Note:**

> This has been sitting in my hard drive for a wee while now, and I saw a Tumblr post that reminded me about it! As such, it brushes over a couple of things (as you'll see, Connie is still working in the ED), and doesn't have a very specific time setting - 2019 is as accurate as I'll give it. But hey-ho. I thought I'd let it see the light of day.

Henrik Hanssen wonders if he might be concussed. Everything seems too bright. He would blame the lighting, if not for the fact he works here and is used to the harshness of the ceiling lights.

“Stay still!” he hears a familiar voice order him. He had not realised he had moved at all. Is he suffering from a head injury, or just suffering from the effects of shock and trauma? He doesn’t recall a blow to the head; it had been confined mostly to his cheekbone and jaw. Maybe he should be more concerned about his teeth. “Honestly, Henrik, what the hell happened?”

“What?”

A bark of a laugh, incredulous and perhaps a little scathing, escapes his medic. “You’re sitting here while I stitch your face, and _you’re_ the one asking ‘what’?”

“Oh,” he mutters. That’s right. He’s sitting in the Emergency Department. “I fell over.”

It’s at that moment that Maja Johansson parts the curtain and enters the cubicle. “Oh, please, Maja, join us,” Henrik quips impatiently. The last thing he needs right now is to listen to Maja; the biggest danger is that she might be right.

Maja, however, knows him better than to be offended by that response. She joins them anyway, and places a can of cola on the over-bed table. “This is what did that, Mrs. Beauchamp,” Maja says. “Well, it was the weapon used, anyway.”

Connie’s eyes widen ever so briefly before she looks directly back to Henrik. “You were attacked?”

“No.”

Maja’s eyes roll, threatening to scrape the sky. He finds kindness in Maja’s eyes, somewhere behind the anger and the indignance that she displays on his behalf. Kind eyes. Kind eyes capable of truth.

“Henrik-”

“I was _not_ attacked,” he insists.

The frustration boils under Maja’s skin; he knows that expression she wears all too well. “You were hit across the face with a can of Coke!” she retorts. “You are currently having your face stitched back up!”

“It was an accident.”

“Then why did you tell me you fell?” Connie asks. Henrik stares at her for a moment. Persistent though he knows Connie is, there had been a part of him – up until now – that believed she would let him lie away his injury.

It’s the brightness in Maja’s eyes that tells him she will not tell Connie what she knows. Henrik thinks Jac Naylor must have given her the bloodied can of cola, but he cannot know for sure. Perhaps it was someone else; there had been a number of his colleagues at Albie’s tonight.

Maja says nothing more on the subject. She sits next to him on the bed, but she does not press the matter. This is perhaps the advantage to knowing a person. She knows when to persevere and she knows when to say nothing, even if the latter is only a temporary measure. He understands now that she will, eventually, demand to know the truth. Better it comes from him than from Jac Naylor or Ange Godard. Not that he is ungrateful for their intervention, but he does hope they have enough respect for him to refrain from telling the entire hospital what they have witnessed tonight.

“I’m going to send you for an x-ray,” Connie tells him. “I want to be sure there are no fractures. You’ve been lucky, Henrik, alright? A full Coke can to the face – it could have been so much worse.”

Henrik almost tells her to mind her own business, before he realises that defensiveness probably isn’t a good look for him at this particular moment. Connie takes his silence as the end of the conversation and leaves him with Maja.

“Are you alright?” Maja asks gently. Henrik looks around and raises an eyebrow at her. “Apart from the obvious.”

There are a thousand possible responses to that question. He could say he is better now than when he could not board a plane because of his anxieties. Or maybe that he is better than when he saw their son shot down after committing a heinous crime, but worse than those days they spent together in their youth. It’s all on a spectrum, after all, and he has many extremes to which he could compare this one incident. Unsavoury it might have been, but nobody has died.

He smiles slightly, though mostly to relieve Maja of some of her worry. “I’m fine, Maja.”

She doesn’t believe him. That is obvious. Really, he isn’t sure he expected her to believe him; she never was one for swallowing his lies. “Don’t sit there thinking I’m an idiot,” she says. He does not miss the slight hiss of anger in Maja’s voice. “I might not have been a witness, but I have a fair idea of what happened here.”

Henrik looks down at his hands, so he does not have to meet her gaze. His instinct is to tell her it was a random attack outside the pub, but he knows she would never believe it. Even if she did, he cannot see Jac or Ange lying about it to Maja. It would be unfair to expect them to.

“You could report it to the police.”

He looks up at her.

“No.” He does not intend that word to sound as sharp as it does, but he needs her to understand that he does not want the police to be involved. This is his business. It is his problem to solve. Or live with. Whichever causes the least trouble.

Maja exhales slowly and takes Henrik’s hand. “Alright. It is your decision.”

Henrik allows her a shadow of a smile, genuine and tired. “Thank you.”

Connie Beauchamp returns to the cubicle. “A porter will be along shortly to take you up to x-ray. I meant to ask before, would you like me to bring the police in for you to give a statement?”

“No, thank you.” The politeness does not come easily. He is weary, now, and in rather a lot of pain.

She looks suspiciously at him for a moment, but does give in. “Alright. Just stay where you are, and I’ll have Charlie bring you some pain relief.”

She walks away again. Henrik thinks he knows why she is assigning Charlie Fairhead the task of bringing him pain relief; his reputation for changing people’s minds precedes him. In this instance, however, Charlie will get nowhere fast. Henrik’s mind is made up, and if Maja can’t talk him into changing it, then Charlie has no chance.

* * *

**Six Months Earlier**

Henrik had not been prepared for this. Not even remotely.

To see this woman, this human being he had (and often still does) love so dearly has knocked him well and truly off kilter. She has done this before, of course. She had turned up to this place uninvited once before.

Here on Keller Ward, he forces himself to remain composed. He behaves like Maja Johansson is as new an acquaintance to him as her companion is. She plays along, scrutinising him all the way.

He shakes Maja’s hand, and then her colleague’s. The woman makes Maja look small; he is quite sure she must look tiny standing between them. “Lovisa Holmberg,” she introduces herself. “I hope you don’t mind, but I have brought along Maja. There is a vacancy for a consultant on AAU, and she has applied for it. She will stay with me in the meantime.”

Henrik stares down at Maja. Never had it even crossed his mind that Maja would apply for a post in this hospital. He is tempted to veto it without a second thought, but it would be unethical to do that. If it so happens she is fit for the job, he knows he cannot block her path. Besides, this entire hospital seems to function on a solid bedrock of personal relationships, vary as they do in their success.

His attention returns to Lovisa Holmberg. When Sacha Levy had told him that he had found a registrar for the ward, Henrik had expected someone much younger. Lovisa is in her late forties, Henrik estimates, with long brown hair and green eyes. Kind eyes, he notices. Bright eyes. She is quite tall, too – about five foot ten or eleven – though it might be that she looks much taller than she is standing next to Maja. “Dr. Holmberg, I believe Mr. Levy is in his office, if you would like to go and make your presence known to him.” He points towards Sacha’s office. “I’m sure he will give you all that you need to settle in.”

Lovisa flashes a smile at him and strides in the direction of the consultant’s office.

It is only when he feels Maja’s disapproving gaze that he realises he has been left alone with her. “I-” he begins, but stops when it occurs to him that he does not know what to say.

“Is it such a burden of shame to simply _know who I am_, Henrik?” she says; though low, there is no mistaking the irritation in her tone.

“Why do you want to work here?” he blurts out before he can stop himself.

“I need a change.”

“There are many ways to find change. You didn’t need to come here.”

“You need a consultant on AAU, don’t you?”

“Yes,” he admits grudgingly, “but your background is in-”

“Serena Campbell’s specialism is vascular surgery. Ric Griffin’s career was centred on this very ward until relatively recently,” she reminds him harshly. “If they are suitable for AAU, there is no reason I should be dismissed because of my surgical career.”

That is something he cannot argue with; AAU has always been a collection of various skills and specialisms. It would be laughable to suggest otherwise.

“And another thing,” Maja adds quickly.

Henrik almost scoffs. There is always another thing with Maja. “What?” he asks, his patience wearing thin.

Maja takes a step closer; Henrik has to force himself not to take a step back. “Keep an eye on Lovisa. There is a reason she is still a registrar.”

“You’ve worked with her?”

“I was her lead consultant for a while. Before…” she says, her words fading away. Henrik has an inkling of when Maja must have ceased to be in command. “All I am trying to say is that she can be a little difficult. She is a good doctor, an excellent surgeon, but if she rattles her colleagues at times, do not be surprised. Lovisa can be extremely nice, but she can change very quickly. I have had to put her back in her corner on a couple of occasions.”

He frowns at her, but he knows her well enough to take her seriously. “Thank you,” he says. “I’ll bear it in mind.”

Maja nods. “I’m going upstairs for my interview,” she tells him, checking her watch.

It dawns on Henrik that he is required to attend that interview, and so he says, “I’ll brief Mr. Copeland on our patient’s progress and then I’ll be there.” It’s better that he isn’t seen escorting Maja to her job interview; it may look like he has already made his mind up in her favour.

As Maja leaves Keller Ward, Henrik breathes out his panic. How can he possibly work in the same building as her? Of course, if he contests her appointment too vehemently, his colleagues will want to know why. They will ask questions. Indifference might be the key here. Objectivity. If, objectively, she is the best fit for the job, he will not oppose her. He will not have a cosy friendship with her – after everything that has happened, that is surely out of the question – but he will not fight her. In all honestly, Henrik isn’t convinced he has the necessary energy to fight her, anyway.

Moderation. Everything in moderation.

**Author's Note:**

> P.S. The Coke can is something extracted from my wild and varied family anthology of explanations for prison sentences. A cousin (thankfully distant) landed in front of a judge for using a full can of Coke as a weapon. The further into the family history I go, the more mad it gets. Google "Dunkeld Murder." 1867. That's the worst I've found so far.


End file.
